It has been 30 years since three-time Tour de France champion Greg LeMond last competed as a pro cyclist, but the fire still burns bright inside him for the sport.
He won the Tour de France in 1986, 1989 and 1990, and remains the only US rider to ever win cycling’s flagship race. He also won the World Championships in 1983 and 1989, coming back from significant gunshot injuries in 1987 to continue his successful career.
During a session of Rouleur Live in London earlier this month, the talkative LeMond covered a number of topics, with strong opinions about the exceptional showings of now three-time Tour winner Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates), two-time Tour winner Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike), new focus on power metres and watts per kilo as well as lucrative rider salaries.
Fascinated by athlete physiology, the 63-year-old enjoys understanding how the current generation can attain their ground-breaking levels of performance. LeMond is concerned about the immense pressure put on today’s WorldTour racers to shed grams and be ultra-lean.
“The basic thing is riders today, forced upon by the teams, are stressing weight," LeMond said, speaking to the public at the Rouleur Live show.
"Weight to power ratio has always been there, but you see some of the riders, they do not look like the same species of humans that I was racing.
“There is no muscle mass. I’m about 178 [centimetres tall], I look at riders and I see they’re 60 kilos. I was 68 kilos!”
Comparison is a part of that: while not having a power metre in his heyday, he surmises that he was doing 5.9 watts per kilo and around 400 watts on the climbs with his 45 percent hematocrit.
That number on the scales is a key difference-maker.
“I think the average peloton weight is three or four kilos lighter. Today, if I was racing, I would have to go into starvation mode to catabolically eat away muscle mass and that’s very difficult.
“I read about riders taking sleeping pills just to get past the hunger … there’s a tremendous pressure on weight. To me, that explains the average overall speed going up. If every kilo is about a minute on a climb, three kilos is three minutes. It's a big deal," LeMond says.
"Can these guys go at 6.9 watts per kilo? I actually kind of believe that they absolutely could.”
Speaking to the Sporza podcast in July, ex-pro Serge Pauwels suggested that Pogačar rode at that figure on Plateau de Beille on the way to winning stage 15 of the 2024 Tour de France.
LeMond also acknowledged multiple other reasons for the modern sport’s increase in speed, such as improved aerodynamics of bikes and tech, as well as haematocrit levels heightened through legal means like altitude training, which he called “very encouraging”.
Riders today not the 'same species'
“If you look at Vingegaard and Pogačar, I think it’s not unthinkable to do what they’re doing. It’s within the realms of possibility,” LeMond said during a 40-minute discussion with Rouleur editor Edward Pickering.
Given the Dane's VO2 max, which LeMond quotes as 96 mL/kg/min [other sources have listed it as approximately 97] and a racing weight he gives as 58kg, it helps to make his performances believable for the American.
LeMond thinks the Slovenian sensation, coming off a 25-win season where he took victory in the Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and World Championships road race, could surpass accepted cycling G.O.A.T. Eddy Merckx.
“Look at Merckx and Bernard Hinault. I believe once in every generation, there’s one or two riders that have more talent. Pogačar is a freak, he won his first Tour. I mean, he might be the best cyclist ever."
In contemporary cycling, misgivings or unsubstantiated speculation often follows hot on the heels of spectacular success or record-breaking performances, given the sport’s chequered history of discredited champions in recent decades. LeMond has his own audacious solution for greater transparency and less doubt.
“Release your data. I would love to see the UCI go ‘OK, it’s mandatory two times a year to release your VO2 max and measure your haematocrit [with] a blood test',” LeMond says.
His belief is that it would be straightforward to know if an individual has cheated after getting a baseline from their blood values.
“If you have a VO2 max of 83 and your haematocrit is pretty low, you can’t do [those feats]. It’s simple to have transparency,” he says.
There are no recent precedents from leading teams or riders to follow LeMond's lead. In 2015, Chris Froome and Team Sky released some of the Tour winner's power data, though the act did little to stop critiques or squash speculation.
LeMond acknowledges that competitiveness between top teams is just one reason why such an eventuality is unlikely. Riders have a right to privacy for their data and physiological data is understandably closely guarded.
“Plus, making that [Pogačar] data available might discourage his rivals even more – and they’re already discouraged,” LeMond said with a smile.
Pro cycling's salary switch-up
The amount of money in the sport has also transformed, with Pogačar set to earn €8 million per year over the next six years per his new deal with UAE Team Emirates.
Four decades ago, the poster boy for US cycling broke ground as the first cyclist to earn $1 million when he signed a lucrative three-year deal with star-studded French squad La Vie Claire in 1984.
“I come from America. In American sports, they always talk about what you signed for,” LeMond says. “When I turned pro, it’s like ‘you don’t talk about it.’ They told me I was the highest-paid neo-pro they ever signed.
"Well, in 1980 as an amateur, I had Avocet as a sponsor and they paid me $30,000. That’s over $100,000 in today’s money. And I signed a pro contract [with Renault] for $12,000. So, I found out, no, I was probably the lowest-paid.
“The sport purposely wanted [us to] not talk about them because they wanted to keep riders’ salaries down. And it’s a hard sport because there’s no revenue outside of sponsorships,” he adds.
Once La Vie Claire owner Bernard Tapie recruited him and made the news public, LeMond’s peers had asking power.
“It’s funny how salaries went up. I heard that others like Stephen [Roche] and Sean [Kelly] went ‘when Greg won the Tour, he got a million. I want a million and one or a million and two.’ Then Delgado won the next year, he wants a million and three. So then by 1989, I believe it’s, like, $2 million a year.
“And it wasn’t me, it was Bernard Tapie who should be credited for that because he announced it.”
Passion
LeMond occasionally reflects on competing in the Tour de France, three or four times a year allowing himself to dream about racing again.
“The last one was three months ago. I’m at the Tour de France with my old team, Gan. I talked to Roger [Legeay, sports director], he lets me into the stage but I’ve got to find my own bike. I’m a week into it and I’m actually still there for the mountain stages,” he says during the discussion with Pickering.
“And I say to myself ‘what the hell am I doing here? I’m 63 and 50 pounds heavier.’ Then I quit!
“But that’s how powerful the Tour de France was for me,” LeMond adds. “I love it. And to be able to conquer it, you’ve got to have the passion. Hunger isn’t quite enough.”
Literally and metaphorically, even if weight can tip the scales in a rider’s favour in a modern sport of wafer-thin margins.
